Please explain how they are "destroying" Linux. they adhere to the license... And do more than most when it comes to software for linux.... Please explain the destruction, without using FSF talking points (which are ambiguous and misleading at best).

You should consider it a continuance of the idemnity that Novell offered already. The deal as I am aware still does not stop MS from sueing Novell or vice versa. Only stops MS from suing you if you are a Novell customer.... Which is how it was when they offered indemnity. They wont defend you if you are using Ubuntu... Only SUSE. Same goes for Redhat, they extend indemnity if you are using another linux distro... only redhat.

If microsoft was truly offering us something then wouldnt they simply describe the patents and allow us to pay for those that we want and to remove the ones that were accidents or that we do not feel the need to pay for? That would be a fair patent deal IMO and show they were serious about competing on a fair level.

Honestly, does anyone think it is about something as simple as money. Sure they want linux to become expensive so that it puts them on more of a level playing field but overall that is a small thing. You cannot destroy linux with money. They want to stop it at 2% and the best way to do that is to break what makes it powerful and effective. What makes linux powerful and effective? one word - sharing. Sharing of ALL changes, sharing of ALL code, sharing of the OS with others. How do you break sharing? You simply make it unable to be shared. Now they have it....

You seem to forget, more money goes to Novell than to MS....
They arent offering "you" anything. It's no lawsuits against Novells customers, you are out of the loop. It didnt matter anyway, they offered indemnity to their users. Now they would only have to defend themselves, while you are still protected.

Also more money goes to Novell than to MS. Directory services were Novells bread and butter... Im thinking it was more about that then anything else.

No linux distributor can stop the sharing of Linux like that... Its not Novells/redhats/mandrivas/ubuntus to do like that... It would be Mr. Torvalds call with that. So that is a moot point in my opinion.

Please explain how they are "destroying" Linux. they adhere to the license... And do more than most when it comes to software for linux.... Please explain the destruction, without using FSF talking points (which are ambiguous and misleading at best).

The generall idea is that Microsoft is bad.
And so anyone helping and associating with Microsoft is also bad.
Kind if like, bank robbers are bad, if you get caught with them leaving a bank then the cops will treat you correspondingly.
If you can't comprehend this, or/and if you don't accept that Microsoft is bad then I am sorry, I can't help you.
Go to your local computer store and see if you can buy a computer preinstalled with Linux. No? Well, think about it, why that is so.

"Please explain how they are "destroying" Linux. they adhere to the license"

It's perfectly possible to "destroy" Linux while not breaking the license.
Not saying the mentioned companies are destroying it (I don't use Linux so I have no opinion on the matter) but one has nothing to do with the other.

You people are so petty in your outlook. Your total hate of microsoft clouds all of your judgement. That is why none of you will ever amount to anything in the world of developing software or business. Pragmatism is a word that you guys never wll be ale to spell, or comprehend.
You, small little men, always will be in your little cubicle, bitching!

And the world will continue growing, Linux will get bigger on the desktop and the lot of you will be bitching about something that is beyong your comprehension becausew of your small minds.

"You people are so petty in your outlook. Your total hate of microsoft clouds all of your judgement. That is why none of you will ever amount to anything in the world of developing software or business. Pragmatism is a word that you guys never wll be ale to spell, or comprehend.
You, small little men, always will be in your little cubicle, bitching!

And the world will continue growing, Linux will get bigger on the desktop and the lot of you will be bitching about something that is beyond your comprehension becausew of your small minds."

The irony of not being able to spell Pragmatism, and yet you spell "judgement"; "wll"; "becausew".

I only really point it out because your clearly not using The latest firefox. Why don't you install linux...even if it is OpenSUSE and use the latest firefox rather than IE.

Looks like old screen shots... Clealy the new cool stuff from SLED SP1 are not in there... (logout screens, fast user switching, etc...)I wonder if they are going to merge all that stuff in to the SUSE version?

And I suppose I should believe every corporate blurb they put out for people to read.
Because corporations would never lie, no, they would not do that, right. Right?
Should I also go and read Microsoft's "Get the facts" blurbs?

Will people ever shut up about the Novell boycotts? I mean, come on... seriously... can we, the Linux users, please make our own decisions for a change without having to hear all the Microsoft haters shoot down everything that Microsoft touches with their deal? Personally, I think that OpenSUSE is a damn good distro, like it or not, whether or not their owner is greedy (it's a company--what do you expect?), selfish (compare to the other two companies who made the deal...), and/or badly managed.

Sure, I wasn't too thrilled about the deal, but a good distro's a good distro, and OpenSUSE continues to get better, while Novell seems to be contributing a lot more than some of the truly greedy/selfish companies (ie... Linspire, and especially Xandros). So far, nothing truly bad has come out of it, and until something does, I will remain neutral about it.

And I might as well add that I don't actually run SUSE myself, although the reason has nothing to do with their deal; it's a damn good distro, but I prefer the lightweight, simple, *fast* Zenwalk (or other Slack deratives). However, it's definitely one of the first distros I would recommend to new Linux users, and if learning Linux wasn't one of the things I'm interested in, it would likely be one of my top distros.

I never managed to install (open)suse.....
Off course, I never had the manual with me, but when I'm sitting behind the single computer in my house and the installer asks me to type the ip address of a ftp server from where I want to download the sources.....

This is the 21th first century man....even OpenBSD lets me SELECT a installation location from a list....

So, I would love to install (open)suse, but never managed, so I just quit and installed Ubuntu or Pclinuxos.

Must say, I'm not too comfortable with this distro and their intimacy wth Microsoft as well

[q]I never managed to install (open)suse.....
Off course, I never had the manual with me, but when I'm sitting behind the single computer in my house and the installer asks me to type the ip address of a ftp server from where I want to download the sources.....

This is the 21th first century man....even OpenBSD lets me SELECT a installation location from a list....

So, I would love to install (open)suse, but never managed, so I just quit and installed Ubuntu or Pclinuxos.

Must say, I'm not too comfortable with this distro and their intimacy wth Microsoft as well [q]

Lol, they're still doing that?! OMG, I remember about 10 years ago when Suse wasn't distributing iso images, you had to buy it, or you could install it from via ftp.
I was a determined little bugger back then and when I failed to install via ftp, I downloaded the entire mirror, about 3Gb (had a fast ADSL back then), to my computer and installed localy from hard disk.
They made it so hard to install Suse without paying for it that for a newbie linux user wannabe it was just about impossible to install.
They were a crappy company back then and they are crap now under Novell. Some people just don't change. AVOID SUSE AT ALL COST!!!

With distro's like Fedora and Ubuntu, I really can't see the point of muddying your hands with SUSE.

I haven't used it it a while personally as I don't like KDE/YAST and professionally I would never recommend Novell over RedHat, indeed I've actively discouraged the use of SUSE, it's just too likely to end in tears.

They don't have anything to do with the deal, but they are part of the taint... Novells deal extends to opensuse, so that makes opensuse a part of it IMO.

Actually, openSuSE users aren't protected if I recall, because the agreement only extends to people who purchased the enterprise version from Novell.

If the FSF really wanted to undermine this deal, they'd lead a nation-wide effort to completely destroy software patents. I'm willing to bet Novell, IBM and even Microsoft would get on board, because they're all threatened-- Microsoft more than most.

I've used OpenSUSE for my Tablet PC up until a few months ago. The reason has nothing to do with Microsoft and Novell, but is because I can't get the Intel debugger to work on it (symbols won't load). I'm not sure what they've done to the kernel/glibc to cause this since it's the only distro where I've had this problem. I just tried the new 10.3 Alpha 5 build, but the problem is still there. However, their Tablet PC support is second to none. I also love the polish on the desktop and the way they put the distro together. It's too bad that it is a little bloated and slower than other distros (I've run the exact same code on the same machine using Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSUSE, and OpenSUSE was the slowest). Still, it's a great distro for a desktop (and a Tablet PC).

I find it frustrating that almost every conversation on OSNews about almost any Linux distribution will turn into a GPLv2 vs GPLv3 vs Microsoft vs Novell vs Patents discussion. In the case of the OpenSuse 10.3 Alpha 5 it is the Novell/MS deal that is brought to attention by almost 80% of the people on this thread so far (translates into 30+ people at the time of writing).

This discussion is strictly not necessary in relation to every news topic, for the following reasons:
- Most people, whether in academic or corporate environments, are perfectly well aware of the Novell/MS deal.
- It is being discussed in great, and informative detail in other places
- The discussion is fragmented and rarely discussed by the people-in-the-know but much more so by the ones who want to throw in their me-to opinion

I use suse on a work computer that must be able to communicate in a Microsoft world, if it couldn't do that then it would go in the bin with all other useless puritanical software.

Then use Open Office's support for the binary MS Office format, which is far, far more complete and will be for years and get your documents into something that can be reliably read into the future in the meantime.

Getting excited about OOXML support is really quite pointless, because there isn't much support there at all. If you want to use Microsoft formats, your best bet is to go and use Microsoft software.

"It is too close to novell for me to be comfortable with it! And I liked what I seen too....loved some of it."

since Novel have spent years paying software engineers salaries to contribute to just about every element of the LInux package, then i guess you will have to find something completely outside the Linux world?